Haywire, Brooke Hayward [the best ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

to seduce; the poor fellow’s pants were shredded to bits. Just before my graduation, Bill had sent me a note. I kept it in my jewelry box as the single piece of correspondence that I ever received from him:

I can’t wait to see you!

Mother and I were having a talk about your car (to be), and Mother says that she isn’t going to pay for gas, etc., because of your smoking. She said she had found butts in your blue jeans, in your desk, and folded into your scarf. Happy Graduation and all that sort of rot. I don’t know what to do for a graduate, but I’ll think of something, just because you’re my long lost sister.

Lots of love,

     Bill

One afternoon in August, I was sitting alone at the grand piano in the ballroom at Yester. The ballroom, though long unused for the purpose for which it had been built, was still the most compelling room in the house. It was on the second story with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the estate, the village of Tweeddale, and, finally, the moors. I came there every afternoon to contemplate what it must have been like just before a dance; the now deserted parquet floor waxed and reflecting the room’s lovely proportions in the candlelight that shimmered from wall sconces and the great chandeliers; I could hear the ghostly sound of bagpipes as a breeze ruffled the pages of my sheet music. The only sheet music around was Noel Coward. I had already memorized “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and “Bittersweet,” which I bellowed into the echoing space while accompanying myself molto espressivo on the piano.

Kenneth came into the room and sat down beside me on the piano bench.

“Be quiet for a minute, darling,” he said. He was very agitated. The letter in his hands was as thick as a pad of paper, and at a glance I could tell by the broad-nibbed scrawl that it was from Mother. “Something terrible has happened in Greenwich,” he said. His voice was thick with emotion. “Your brother and sister have broken your mother’s heart.”

“How?” I asked. What had they done now? Flunked summer school? Set fire to the house? I couldn’t help smiling to myself as I recalled the time Bill had arranged a box of .22-caliber bullets in a circle in the grass, so that when the sun’s rays—

“They couldn’t have picked a better way,” said Kenneth bitterly. “They have gone to live with your father.”

I stared at him aghast. He turned the pages of the letter.

“Shall I read it to you?” he asked. “Your mother—I’m worried about her.”

I nodded. Bridget and Bill, deserters. Didn’t they realize they’d left me, too? Sitting here innocently on a piano bench in Scotland? Or care? By God, they’d really done it, the selfish little bastards. Couldn’t they have waited two more weeks until I got home to smooth things over? Idiots. Cowards. I despised them. My mouth filled with acrid fluid, my eyes burned. Craven, cruel, dumb. Didn’t they stop long enough to consider the consequences, the destruction to their lives? To Mother’s? Clearly that was intended. To Father’s, then, and Kenneth’s and, most of all, mine?

The letter had been written in the form of a diary over a week’s time. Mother had added to it every night. Events were recounted in chronological order. Her tone was frank, anguished, but without self-pity. Both sides were represented. It was a bravura piece of reportage. Even in the confusion of my anger, I couldn’t help admiring its style. The cumulative effect of the details was shocking. By the time it ended, I was drenched in perspiration.

Mother did not blame Bridget and Bill at all. She blamed herself. This, more than anything else, made me want to cry.

The break, it seemed, had been precipitated by a note left on the hall table. The note was open and conspicuously intended, claimed Mother, to be read by anyone who passed. She did so. Bridget had written it to a school friend but it was clearly meant for Mother. (In Bridget’s later version, this so-called note was, in reality, a locked diary, which Mother had pried open.)

The note outlined Bridget’s disaffection from Greenwich. She found it provincial after the grandeur of Europe. She disliked the tedium of classes at summer school, but most of all she disliked being alone in the house with Mother. Everyone was on vacation, even Elizabeth. Bill was sweet but no help. The truth was she didn’t love Mother; she hated her. The contrast between Mother and Nan, underlined for her on trips to Sicily and Rome and Paris with Father and Nan at Christmas and Easter, was more dramatically apparent now that she was actually back in Greenwich. She felt she didn’t belong. She wanted to return to Europe immediately.

On reading this, Mother was outraged. When she picked Bridget up at Brunswick at lunchtime, she said, “You have made yourself very clear, my darling. I’m not so stupid I could fail to understand. You hate me and want to leave. Perhaps you would be happier living with your father?”

This was a test I’d encountered many times and ignored. To Mother’s horror, Bridget’s answer was, coldly, “Yes.”

Then, a few minutes later, Bill came bicycling in from Brunswick. He was informed of this turn of events and asked if he, too, would like to leave.

“What about Brooke? Is she going?” he inquired cagily, apprehensive at the idea of holding down the fort alone.

“I assume so; why not?” responded Mother, implying she expected us all to desert her. (I could hear her martyred tone of voice as if I’d been there. Mother tended to cover her injured feelings with a first coat of icy aplomb and then, just to remind us of the courageous struggle that took, a second one that hinted at her unmentionable suffering.)

Bill and Bridget called Father. He was preparing to make The Spirit of St. Louis. Father was flattered at the notion that the two